


feeding the idea of you (leaving you starving)

by Mymlen



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Humanstuck, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:49:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28201161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mymlen/pseuds/Mymlen
Summary: For most of high school, Karkat was just someone in the periphery of Dave's friend group (Terezi's childhood friend, someone John sometimes hung out with). Then Dave became actual friends with him too, accidentally made out with him at a party and then never talked to him again. Now they're both in college and Dave is doing just fine pretending they don't know each other.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76





	feeding the idea of you (leaving you starving)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [LnxMorphine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LnxMorphine) for being a true friend and betaing even though she's not a homestuck.

Your name is Dave Strider, you are in your first year of college, and you’re pretty sure you’re supposed to be having the time of your life. Instead, you’re at a boring party in a ridiculous frat-house where everyone seems hell-bent on acting out some Hollywood-prescribed vision of exactly what that is supposed to be like. There’s red solo cups, shitty music, and a gaggle of frat-bros with backwards baseball caps egging each other on in some kind of testosterone-fueled beer chugging contest. If you were not in such a shitty mood, maybe you would have enjoyed their commitment to the aesthetic, maybe gotten in on it yourself, even if you can’t wear baseball caps for dumb childhood-trauma reasons, but tonight it just leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth and a tight knot of anxiety in your gut. You used to think this kind of shit was made up, but no, here you are, and you fucking hate it.

You’re sprawled in the corner of a couch next to some guys you don’t know, watching them fail spectacularly at playing Mario Kart. You’ve been rolling your empty bottle of beer back and forth in your hands for maybe half an hour, trying to convince yourself to get up and get another one from the kitchen, but your body feels heavy and uncooperative, and instead you’ve just been sinking deeper into the shitty embrace of the couch. The couch is growing on you. Not in a sentimental way, you absolutely hate this couch, the upholstery is fraying and you can see the stains on it even in the low lighting, but you’re also feeling kind of frayed and stained, so there is definitely some sort of symbiosis going on. Like fungus on rotting trees.

You’re thinking of calling Rose. You’re not going to call Rose. You can’t remember exactly what the difference is between your time zones, but it’s probably unreasonably late where she is.

You and Jade talked on the phone for like half an hour on Wednesday, and it was honestly the best thing that happened to you all week.

You haven’t seen any of your high-school friends in four months. Rose got into some fancy liberal arts college, Terezi went off to Yale and Jade is in some impressive physics program somewhere and will probably be head-hunted by NASA before she’s even done with undergrad. John is doing a gap year that he failed to tell any of you about until like a month before graduation when he suddenly announced he would be fucking off to Europe. Which was also when all your excitement about college started turning into a churning pit of dread. You and John had been doing your college applications together, because unlike everyone else in your ridiculously over-achieving friend group, you both had fairly mediocre grades, limited funds, and a realistic perspective on how far that would get you. You honestly hadn’t cared much about where you went as long as it was far enough away that you wouldn’t have to keep living with your bro, so you just applied to all the same places he did. You had kind of assumed the two of you would room together for the first year. You had been looking forward to it.

Your actual roommate is named Chris, and you have spoken a total of maybe five words to each other. He’s barely ever in your room, and when he is, he’s either on his phone, asleep or on his way out. During the weekdays, he leaves for class in the morning before you get up, then comes home around midnight and immediately passes out in his bed. You have never seen anyone else go from consciousness to unconsciousness that fast without either drugs or violence involved. On the weekends, he doesn’t come home at all. You have no idea where he goes. You’ve never seen him at any of the parties you’ve been at.

There’s a bass thumping in one of the other rooms, and you think that is where most of your friends have gone. You do have friends. You’re not a complete loser. You’ve been doing your stoic cool-dude routine since day one, you know how to pretend to be confident, and you can be funny when you want to, and it works here just like it did in high school. You have people who say hi to you when you pass each other in the cafeteria, who chat with you in class and invite you along to parties like this one, and you should probably count that as a success, instead of letting your mild drunkenness serve as your own personal highway of existential angst, taking you straight to nostalgia city. Seriously, you are at a party containing both copious amounts of alcohol and several kind of nice looking girls, and you are spending it sitting around missing _high school_. You are well aware of what a pathetic chump that makes you, but while high school was definitely its own kind of shit show, you also had real friends back then. Obviously there was a lot of just shooting the shit in class, just like you do with your friends here, but occasionally, you would have an actual conversation with someone. And while you and John never actually _talked_ about real shit, he would always let you stay over at his house with no questions asked. And even if you spent the whole night just playing Tony Hawk and calling each other names, it wouldn’t be because John didn’t know something was up, or because he didn’t care, and he would usually sneak in a hug at some point. You like to think of yourself as an independent, self-reliant kind of dude, and obviously you have dealt with some pretty heinous shit on your own, but it was nice to have people around who would sometimes insist on dealing with it for you. Being at college surrounded by people who take your bullshit at face value has left you feeling hollowed out.

And that’s where you are when Karkat shows up at the party – balls deep in self-pity, fondling an empty beer bottle with your sweaty palms like you’re a precocious teenager making his first forays into the wonderful world of jacking off. You’ve got your head tilted back against the horrible couch, and from this vantage point you have a clear view of the front door when it opens up and lets in another group of people you don’t know and don’t care about, bringing with them the short, familiarly angry shape of Karkat Vantas. For a second, your heart stutters in your chest, you feel a sweep of cold all over your skin, your gross hands get even grosser, and then before you have the sense to duck out of sight, he turns his head and looks right at you.

It’s not like you didn’t know this was a risk. Your school isn’t huge. You’re both studying film, you have a couple of classes with him, you’ve seen him around campus before and you’ve been doing just fine pretending you don’t know each other. But you didn’t think you would risk running into him _here_. Karkat isn’t the frat-party type. He’s not the partying type at all, and he sure as fuck isn’t as susceptible to peer pressure as you are.

But he’s seen you now, so you can’t hide. Instead you tilt your head up at him in a sort of casual bro-nod, relieved that at least you’re still wearing your shades and that you’ve had a world-class education in keeping your facial expressions on lockdown. He doesn’t nod back, maybe he rolls his eyes, you can’t quite tell. The important thing is that he doesn’t try to come over and talk to you. One of his friends says something to him, and he turns away and follows them in the direction of the kitchen.

The well of dread his appearance has opened up inside you is wildly out of proportion, you are well aware of that. The specter of Rose who lives rent-free in your head is raising her eyebrows at you as you gather up all your limbs and hightail it to the nearest bathroom. It’s not like you and Karkat have beef or anything. Not that long ago, the two of you were friends. It’s just that you… aren’t friends anymore.

For most of high school, Karkat only existed in your periphery – you knew who he was because he was Terezi’s childhood friend, but he obviously didn’t like you, which you assumed was because he was into Terezi, and you didn’t have time for that kind of drama, so you mostly just ignored him. But then in senior year, John became friends with him too, and it became harder to avoid group hangouts that included him. It left you tense and irritated that you couldn’t spend time with your friends without having to deal with his death glares and just knowing he was rolling his eyes at everything you said, but there wasn’t really anything you could do about it. You didn’t mention it to anyone it either. You could just imagine the miserable puppy-dog look on John’s face if he realized two of his friends didn’t like each other. And Jade is a firm believer in the achievability of world peace, she wanted everyone to get along and she was oblivious as shit about any kind of social dynamics that did not fit into that narrative. Rose on the other hand picked up on the tension between you and Karkat like a shark smelling blood, which is why you eventually dropped your whining on her. You were hanging out at her place just the two of you, her long nails clacking away at her keyboard working on either another overwrought essay for her AP English class or adding a chapter to her endless wizard-fic while you spread out on her bed, dicking around on your phone and talking at her without expecting a response. You started complaining about how it sucked that Karkat was always there now because he obviously hated you – and Rose stopped typing and turned around in her chair with that serious look on her face, and told you she had no impression that Karkat disliked you. Which you obviously protested until she gave up, but it stayed in the back of your mind, and you started to relax around him, jabbed at him less and so got less hostility in return. And you sort of became friends, though still only in that way where you needed at least three other people as a buffer between you in any social situation.

The first time you actually talked to him one on one was when Vriska somehow managed to procure vodka and so you all got drunk at her house, and you and Karkat ended up being the last two awake because both of you were total insomniacs, and also Karkat didn’t drink and you were apparently the only one of your friends who could hold your liquor. And so in the cavernous space of Vriska’s mom’s fancy living room, you scrounged up the courage to finally ask if the two of you needed to discuss the Terezi-thing. And Karkat growled out “what fucking Terezi thing?”

And it turned out there wasn’t one, or at least not the thing you had thought, because Karkat was apparently gay.

“I mean, I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t mad at you for stealing my best friend, but I don’t give a fuck that you two are dating or whatever.”

“We aren’t dating,” you said, and he seemed almost as blindsided by that as you had been by the gay thing.

After that there was about a month where things were good. You would send him your deepfried memes and he would write you three page long rants about stupid movies at 3 am. You even let him come by the apartment once, when your bro wasn’t home. You still remember the jittery nervousness when you took him up the stairs, and it was only about fifty percent worry about unsprung booby traps. You shuttled him quickly through the living room before he could look too closely at any of the weird shit in there. You remember how he looked around your room like it was a Cluedo-game and he was trying to solve the murder of Colonel Mustardshit. You watched him as he examined the collection of dead things on your bookshelf, the fossils and the bugs in resin and the snake in formaldehyde and said “this is so gross” with a strange kind of awe in his voice that made your chest seize up. So you showed him some of your photographs too, and you remember how he stared at the one of the crow on your windowsill with the rooftops behind it for so long you nearly broke into a cold sweat, and then he said, angrily, like you had personally offended him: “why the fuck do you take so many heinous-ass selfies if you can do this?” And you told him it was ironic and Karkat called you a pathetic, dick-fondling douche, but it was like he looked at you differently after that.

Things stopped being good after the party at Rose’s house. Rose didn’t usually host parties even though her house was larger than anyone else’s in your friend group (except for Vriska who lived in a fucking mansion, but you still prefer not to count her as part of the group). That weekend though, Rose had insisted you all come over – and that no one needed to bring their own alcohol, because she was raiding her mom’s liquor cabinet. You googled the names on some of the bottles Rose put in front of you because they looked expensive as fuck, and they were, but when you asked Rose if her mom would get mad, she just looked you dead in the eyes and let the bottle of champagne she was holding slip out of her hands and smash on the kitchen tiles. She didn’t clean it up either, just stepped over the wet puddle, crunching bits of glass under her Mary Janes to get another one from the cupboard.

At that party, you ended up alone with Karkat again, but this time it was on purpose. Everyone else was dancing, but Karkat remained planted on the couch in his huge, ugly sweater looking like he would rather die than join them, so you decided to drag him out of there, you don’t remember exactly why or what you told him, something like “did you know Rose’s crib has an observatory? It’s the shit of your dreams, Karkles”, and he said “don’t call it a _crib_ , asswipe”, but still followed you up the stairs.

You don’t remember anymore, if it was Karkat who kissed you, or you who kissed him. Just that that’s where you ended up, in the observatory, not even pretending to look at stars. You remember the feeling of Karkat smiling against your lips, and you remember slipping your fingers into the thick, tight curls of his hair, and his sharp intake of breath when you snuck a hand under his sweater, the dip of his stomach under your fingers, the liquid shiver that ran down your spine when you buried your face in Karkat’s neck and breathed in the smell of his skin. You remember thinking, even while it was happening, that it was a bad idea. That it was a stolen moment. That even if it was nice, it wasn’t for you. That Karkat was actually gay so it wasn’t fair of you to do this when you weren’t. That you should probably sneak a “no homo” in there somewhere so Karkat didn’t get the wrong idea. You didn’t, though you did eventually pull back enough to look down at Karkat’s wide, dark eyes, the soft smile curling his full lips and the way he looked at you then is still seared into your memory – he looked flushed and surprised and so genuinely happy about all of it, and you remember the panic that set in at that moment, when you realized he wasn’t even drunk, that that trapdoor of plausible deniability was firmly locked and had been the whole time. You’re pretty sure the panic didn’t show on your face, that you sounded casual enough when you muttered something about how you should probably get back downstairs before the others started looking for you.

The others hadn’t even noticed you were gone, or at least they didn’t comment on it. And nothing else happened that night. Karkat slept on the couch in the living room, and you slept next to Rose in her bed. You woke at six the next morning, still drunk, and texted Bro to come pick you up, and for once he actually did. It felt like the hangover and the roiling knot of guilt in your stomach were both equally responsible for you spending most of that Saturday crouched over the toilet puking your guts out.

Rose texted you to ask where you had gone and you didn’t reply. John texted in the evening, asking if you wanted to come over for pizza. You ignored that too. You didn’t hear from Karkat until Sunday. You deleted his text without opening it. You skipped school on Monday. When the others started calling you, you switched off your phone.

You stopped talking to Karkat after that. Ignored him in class and in the hallways, made up some half-assed excuse to leave as soon as he showed up for any group thing. Eventually your friends picked up on it and stopped inviting both of you. Eventually John stopped asking you what had happened. Terezi didn’t, so for a while you stopped seeing her too.

And finally, that became normal, sort of like it had been in the beginning. A barely noticeable fracture line in your friend group. You all graduated. You all moved on. You did hear from the others that Karkat had gotten into the same college as you. You knew you would both be studying film. It had been fine so far; it was easier not to talk to each other when everyone thought you were strangers.

It was easy right up until Karkat showed up at that fucking party that you didn’t even want to be at. Usually you only see him in class, and you know he’ll be there, you have your guard up. Seeing him here felt like having your autopilot kicking out when you’d long forgotten how to fly manually and suddenly you were hurtling towards the ground.

You judiciously allow yourself five minutes of recuperation time in the bathroom, and then an extra one just to annoy the asshole in the hallway who keeps knocking on the door while you’re in there. You could just go home, of course, but it’s a big house and it’s a big party, it shouldn’t be that hard to avoid Karkat. And anyway, you’re not going to be the kind of coward who leaves a party just because his ex showed up. Not that Karkat is your ex, obviously, but leaving would still make you feel like a huffy, spurned lover, so you stay. And you find more alcohol, and you get to work on getting as drunk as humanly possible.

Some guy who probably isn’t called Chad but absolutely looks like he is challenges you to see who can chug a beer fastest. You eviscerate him, and maybe your gloating does get a bit excessive, and maybe it isn’t totally uncalled for when probably-not-Chad calls you a fag, but you still deck him. You’re out of practice fighting, since you don’t live with Bro anymore and no longer risk getting jumped every time you leave your room, but very few people who get into fights at parties have much actual fighting experience. Not-Chad might be just as tall and probably twice as heavy as you, but even drunk you should have been able to take him down easily, except it turns out none of your college “friends” are around, and the other guys in the kitchen are either friends with not-Chad or they agree with him that you’re a dick, so pretty quickly it’s four on one, and you manage to get one of them on the ground, but by the time someone shows up to break up the fight, you’ve taken more than a few hits and you’re having a hard time staying on your feet. While not-Chad and his friends get pulled away by some of the guys hosting the party, you glance over at the people in the doorway who came to gawk, and of course Karkat is there. You try to give him a look to tell him to go away, but apparently you fail, because instead Karkat shoves through the people in front of him and heads towards you. He drags your arm over his shoulders and pulls you with him out of the kitchen.

“Leave me alone,” you slur, and Karkat scoffs.

He drags you through the house, you stumble down the porch steps and try to sit down, but Karkat drags you back to your feet.

“Come on, asshole, I’m taking you home,” he says.

Karkat’s car is parked a little way down the street. He opens the passenger side door and dumps you on the seat.

“You shouldn’t drive,” you mutter.

“I don’t drink, remember?” Karkat says, kicking your dangling feet inside before slamming the door shut.

You don’t know how Karkat knows where you live, but he goes the right way without asking. It’s not a long way from the frat house to your dorm, but you still have to make Karkat pull over for you to throw up. You don’t get out of the car, just shove the door open, hanging onto the doorhandle while you empty your stomach on the sidewalk.

Karkat parks neatly outside the door to your dormitory and asks if you can make it inside on your own. You tell him yes, and then proceed to stumble on your way out the car, landing on all fours on the pavement. You close your eyes for a moment and wait for the world to stop spinning so you can get back up, but before you get there Karkat is by your side again, grabbing your arm and hauling you to your feet.

“Jesus Christ you’re pathetic,” he mutters, and you laugh quietly and say “yeah, I know.”

The two of you get into the elevator and you’re glad you threw up on the way or you might have done it there instead.

“Please tell me you still have your keys,” Karkat says when you’ve made it to your room. You nod and pull them out of your pocket. Karkat takes them from you before you can attempt to unlock the door yourself, and he lets you in.

Karkat leaves down the hall to get a glass of water from the kitchen. You sit on the edge of your bed, arms resting on your legs, head hanging down between your shoulders. Time skips and you don’t even notice Karkat coming back until he is pressing a glass into your hand.

“Drink this,” he says, and you do.

Karkat pulls out his phone and starts texting, the light from his screen the brightest thing in the room, casting blue highlights on his brown skin.

“Are you texting Rose?” you ask.

“Why the fuck would I be texting Rose? I’m telling my friends to find another ride home.”

You close your eyes and swallow.

“Oh,” you say. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I told them I might leave early.”

Karkat puts his phone away and takes the glass from your hand, setting it down on your nightstand. You close your eyes and lean back, too far too fast, knocking your skull hard against the wall. You’re too drunk for it to hurt much, but you must have looked like an idiot. You feel a smile tugging at the edge of your mouth, and you wait for Karkat to call you a shitsquatting moron or something, but he doesn’t. Instead, you feel a tug at your feet and when you open your eyes again you can see the top of Karkat’s head where he’s crouching down in front of you, undoing your shoelaces and pulling off one of your shoes.

“You don’t have to do that,” you mutter.

“Yeah, no shit,” Karkat says, starting in on the other one.

Once your shoes are off, you drag your feet onto the bed and manage to lie down the right way across this time. You’re still wearing your shades and they get pushed crooked on your face when you drop your head on your pillow. You reach up and pull them off, setting them on the night stand next to the empty glass.

“Do you need more water?” Karkat asks.

You groan, shaking your head into the pillow. You feel Karkat kick the bed.

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” you say.

“Fine, I’ll leave you to dehydrate on your own.”

You hear him cross over to the door, the handle being pushed down.

“Karkat?” you say, not sure he’ll hear you when your mouth is still mostly buried in your pillow.

He stops. There’s no sound of the door slamming behind him.

“What?” he says, and you feel a twinge deep in your chest when he does.

You push yourself back up – things started spinning again as soon as you laid down anyway. You look blearily at Karkat, who is just a smudged shadow in your dark room, though there’s enough streetlight coming through the window that you can still make out his face, his thick eyebrows drawn together in a scowl, that permanent annoyance on his face that is so achingly familiar. You missed him so much.

“Thanks for taking me home.”

Karkat rolls his eyes.

“You’re welcome.”

You swallow hard.

“I shouldn’t have done that to you,” you say.

“What, make me take you home after you got your idiot ass into a fight even though you’re too drunk to stand? Yeah, no shit, Dave.”

You should probably shut up now.

“No I mean- back in high school. I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

Karkat is quiet for a moment, and you stare down at your knees, hand clutching your pillowcase in a white-knuckled fist. You’ve always been very bad at shutting up.

“It was a long time ago,” he says.

“It wasn’t fair though, it was…” you run a hand through your hair, glancing at him and then away, wishing you were still wearing your shades. You can’t look at him while you’re saying this. “It was such a shitty thing to do, like what kind of asshole just does that to their friends, that’s so fucked up.”

You glance at him again, some kind of masochistic impulse, you don’t actually want to see his reaction to the bullshit coming out of your mouth. He’s frowning, but it’s the sad frown. You hate that you can still tell the difference.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was.”

You close your eyes again. You don’t know why it makes it so much worse to hear him say it. It’s not like you expected him to go “what, oh that? I didn’t even notice”. Maybe you had hoped for more inventive swears, though. Less transparent honesty. You’ve never been good with that. There’s a reason your thoughts flinch away from anything related to Karkat, a reason that even though you have been so fucking lonely ever since you started college you never once considered texting the one friend who was right there, because even you haven’t been able to bullshit yourself out of how supremely fucked up that whole thing was.

“I’m sorry,” you say and Karkat sighs.

“It’s fine Dave, it’s not like I’m still heartbroken and butthurt about it.”

“We should have just talked though.”

He scoffs.

“Not like I didn’t try. Pretty sure you blocked my number, and I know you blocked me on Pesterchum. I mean, it sucked ass, but I assumed you just had some huge gay freakout about it that your delicate Texan soul couldn’t handle, which was like… not my problem I guess.”

“What? No, dude, I’m not a fucking homophobe!”

He rolls his eyes so hard you think he might hurt himself, like there might be a genuine risk they’ll get stuck in there with the wrong side out or something.

“Sure.”

“Okay, no,” you say, shuffling forward on the bed, because yeah, you’re still not sober enough to try something as risky as standing up, but this is important and you lean forward trying to at least look earnest even if your thick, useless tongue is going to muddle every other word. “Dude, I know, I mean- yeah, I guess I did spend a good chunk of my days inserting casual no-homos into every conversation like a homophobic chump would do, and I can see how that might make you think I was a huge homophobe, like I get the logic there, but mostly it was just that I don't think about the things I say, you know that, I just say shit all the time, so all those maybe kind of homophobic things I might have said, it was kind of like how you know when they printed old-timey newspapers and all the letters had to be kept in separate lil’ boxes so they didn’t get mixed up? My mind was basically like that, right, and things could go in separate boxes, and some boxes, like the ones with the asterisks in them or whatever, noone ever needs an asterisk, so there’s no reason to go looking in there, so maybe the asterisks get a little dusty, and that makes you want to look at them even less because they’re all gross and shit-“ Karkat’s frown deepens and you drop that metaphor so fast it breaks the sound barrier. “And anyway,” you say, trying to make your voice less intense, because earnestness clearly isn’t working for you. “What I’m saying is basically maybe it was one of those things I wasn’t actively thinking about, but that was because I didn’t mind, right?”

Karkat levels you with a disconcertingly Rose-like stare and the silence in your room feels very loud all of a sudden.

“You’re aware that was incredibly unconvincing, right?” he says.

You wince.

“Yeah. But seriously, I knew you were gay even before we became friends, you know I didn’t have a problem with it.”

Karkat shrugs.

“I figured maybe it took some sloppy make-outs for the knowledge to sink in.”

You start to shake your head, but stop quickly because that feels pretty awful actually.

“It wasn’t like that, Karkat, I swear.”

Karkat finally lets go of the doorhandle, crossing his arms across his chest and slumping back against the door.

“Okay,” he says. “Then why?”

You stare at him. That’s a very good and very obvious question to ask at this point in the conversation, but for some reason it’s also the one that makes all the words that were just lining up to cascade out of your mouth a second ago suddenly dry up. You hunch over, pushing the heels of your hands into your eyes and groan.

“I don’t even know.”

You’re not looking at him, and you can still feel his exasperation like a physical thing in the air around you.

“Fine,” he says. “Maybe we shouldn’t be having this conversation while you’re black out drunk anyway. Just go to sleep, Dave. I’ll see you in class on Monday.”

Another wave of panic rolls through you at that, because sure, you’ll see Karkat on Monday, but by then things will be back to normal, and you will keep ignoring each other like you have all year, and despite how exceptionally shitty you feel right now, and how fucking terrible this conversation is, it still somehow feels good to- just to have him in your room and have him looking at you and feel like he cares about you at least a little bit, enough to take you home and give you water and listen to all the dumb things you’re saying, and you have to keep talking because otherwise he is going to leave, or you’re going to start crying, and you’re not sure which of them would happen first.

“No, Karkat, I’ll explain,” you say, and you hold your breath for a second, watching his hand on the door.

He looks back at you. He doesn’t leave. You take a deep breath.

“I just – it’s fucking dumb, alright,” you say. “But it’s like… it was just something that happened, but we’re both pretty intense dudes, you know, you take romance pretty seriously and all that, so yeah, maybe you liked me, and maybe I liked you too, you know, but then what? Were we supposed to start going out? Just hang out all the time and hold hands and go on dates and shit, like that sure fucking sounds nice but… I can’t… it would have been a week max before I did something stupid, I’d forget your birthday or our anniversary or-“

“How the fuck would we have an anniversary after a week?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one who’s into shit like that, don’t tell me you wouldn’t celebrate a one-week anniversary, Karkles.” Karkat scowls even harder at that, and you know you’re right and it makes it easier to go on. “But that’s what I’m saying, I would have been totally down with that, there would have been roses and chocolate and it would have been cute as shit, but eventually I would have fucked it up, there’s no way that’s not how it would’ve gone down because that’s just what I’m like. I’m a fuckup, Karkat. I would have fucked it up. And you’re so nice, and you deserve someone who’s nice to you and I’m just… sometimes I just. Don’t talk to people. I’ll just ignore them for a week and I don’t get out of bed and I just… my life is a mess and I’m a mess and I would have ruined it.”

“That’s so fucking stupid, Dave,” he says the moment you stop talking, which is probably a good thing, otherwise the words would have just kept coming. “We were friends, it’s not like I didn’t know you.”

“But you liked me,” you say.

Karkat hesitates for a moment, and then shrugs.

“Yeah, I did.”

“And if I’d tried to date you, I would have made you stop liking me so fast, and I guess I just…” You shrug. You usually don’t run out of words like this. Usually the words run circles around you and whoever you’re talking to. There should have been at least a three-sentence mixed metaphor about exactly how fast you would have made Karkat hate you. But the truth is a lot of pulling off looking this cool all the time is about pretending not to give a shit about anything, and you wouldn’t have been able to pretend you didn’t give a shit about Karkat. And the other part of looking cool is avoiding doing things you know you’re going to fail at, so you weren’t going to give Karkat the chance to reject you or get tired of you or break up with you. And you might still be drunk and a little nauseous and so fucking tired, but you can’t tell him that. It’s been over a year and you still can’t look at his stupid, pretty face and tell him that you cut him out of your life as soon as it looked like something might happen, as soon as you realized you weren’t in control of the situation anymore, because you were already fighting to keep it together, and choosing not to have Karkat in your life while you still could seemed like a better solution than inviting him into the dumpsterfire of your heart and then losing him anyway.

“I know you’re drunk, but you can still hear how stupid you sound, right?”

You let out a strangled little laugh.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, mostly I was just mad at you, but also it was pretty hard not to take it personally or feel like the biggest piece of shit for kissing you, like I had fucked up our friendship, and it took some fucking time for me to get over that, and now you’re saying you were actually saving me because it would have been much worse if we had just dated?”

“No! I mean yeah, objectively speaking, just looking at the kind of person I am, it would have been horrible, but I’m not saying that I wasn’t mainly, you know, protecting myself. I knew I hurt you, fuck, I would’ve had to be blind and stupid not to see that, but I couldn’t… if I’d asked you out and you’d said no, or if you said yes and then broke up with me – I just. Couldn’t handle that.”

Karkat closes his eyes for a moment and sighs. You can feel your heartbeat all the way to your fingertips, and things are still fuzzy around the edges and it’s hard to remember exactly what you just said, but you know you said too much, and you feel naked and raw, and it’s too dark in the room for Karkat to see your face properly, but you still wish you had kept your shades on. Your throat is painfully tight, and you stare at the floor in front of you, pretending like you don’t feel the hot prickling in the corners of your eyes. Karkat didn’t sign up for this, he just brought you home and you shouldn’t have taken that as an excuse to dump your bad conscience all over him and ask him to forgive you.

“I’m going to get you another glass of water,” Karkat says abruptly.

“What?” you say, but he is already out the door.

It takes him longer this time, or maybe you’re just starting to sober up, your time-perception getting better while the creeping headache in your temples gets worse. You don’t go anywhere while he’s gone, just stay on the edge of the bed feeling wringed out and exhausted and wired up all at the same time. Eventually Karkat comes back. He closes the door behind him and hands you the glass, and you dutifully drink it down while he watches like some disconcertingly attractive and judgmental parental figure.

“Lucky your roommate isn’t here,” Karkat says, glancing at the empty bed at the other side of the room. “Not that this hasn’t been awful already, but at least we didn’t have an audience. Where is he?”

You shrug.

“Dunno. Guy’s a ghost, he sleeps here three nights a week, tops.”

Karkat takes the glass out of your hands and puts it down on the bedside table, even though you feel confident enough in your motor functions by now you could have done it yourself. You’re about to tell him that when he asks you to stand up. You frown up at him.

“Why?” Motor functions aside, you’re pretty sure your bed is the only sensible place for you to be right now, and if you hadn’t been an idiot about basically everything tonight you could have already been asleep by now.

Karkat glares at you.

“Because if I try to hug you while you’re sitting down there it’s going to be bad and awkward, so get up.”

You do. And Karkat pulls you into a hug. He’s almost a full head shorter than you, but you go boneless in his arms, and still manage to rest your head on his shoulder. His chin digs into your hair and you slide your hands around his waist and allow yourself be held. You can’t remember the last time someone hugged you. You don’t know if that’s sad. You don’t know if that’s a normal adult thing or a Dave’s-fucked-up-life thing, but you know you’re not the kind of person people hug, or even touch, and that it’s definitely at least partly your own fault. The only other person who hugs you is Egbert, and those are usually quick, one-armed bro-hugs, and you always get all stiff and awkward about it, but right now you’re drunk and tired and you don’t care, and Karkat’s arms are solid around you and his sweater is so soft and you let yourself melt into it. Karkat is a great hugger. Karkat hugs like he is in it for the long haul.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” you murmur into his shoulder.

Karkat scoffs, and you can feel it as much as hear it – the movement of his chest and the warm breath against your ear.

“No.”

“You should.”

“I swear, if you’re trying to ask me out-“

You shake your head, a nervous laugh forcing itself up your throat.

“I literally just told you I’d be the shittiest boyfriend.”

Karkat’s arms tighten around you for a moment. You have your arms around his waist, which you’re trying not to think too hard about, but you squeeze him back.

“I wouldn’t have broken up with you, though,” Karkat says very quietly. “If we had actually dated each other in high school, you could have been the worst sack of shit and I wouldn’t have let you go for anything.”

Another hiccupy laugh forces its way up your throat, except it comes out sounding more like a sob. You’re glad your face is still hidden in Karkat’s sweater.

“You deserve better than that.”

“You deserve nice things too, Dave. I thought Rose and John and Jade would have gotten that into your stupid head by now.”

“Nah, this skull is impenetrable. Nothing gets in there.”

One of Karkat’s hands strokes up your back to curl around the back of your head, fingers carding through your hair and sending shivers all the way down your spine.

“I need to get home, Dave. And you need to sleep.”

He says it so quietly, as if you were already falling asleep. He says it like he doesn’t actually want to go, like he would be fine with staying here and holding you as long as you want to be held, which might be forever. You let your arms drop from around his waist and step out of his arms. You glance out the window, at the light-pollution almost-black of the sky and the dark, hulking shapes of the other dorm buildings silhouetted against it. You’re feeling cold, so you cross your arms over your chest, hoping it doesn’t come off like you’re trying to hug yourself now that he’s not doing it anymore.

“I’ll see you Monday, alright,” Karkat says, voice soft and quiet like he’s still murmuring right into your ear.

You nod. “Alright.”

“And you’ll say hi to me.”

“Yeah,” you say.

“You will. We’re done with this bullshit now, okay?”

You nod. “We’re done.”

You’re still staring out the window as if the deserted parking lot between your building and the next is the most interesting thing you’ve ever seen. Karkat is just a dark shape moving in your periphery. You listen to his footsteps when he crosses to the door, hear him push the handle down to leave for – what, the third time this night? And you still don’t want him to go. The hallway outside is still lit, and when you turn you can see his face clearly, and he looks tired and grumpy and not nearly as soft as he sounds, and everything about him is so familiar and you love him so much.


End file.
